The Perfectionists

"What the girls of Beacon Heights High know is that you don't have to be good to be perfect . . ."

At Beacon Heights High, Nolan Hotchkiss is king. His charm, wealth and good looks are deceptively seductive, and many are the students whose lives and reputations have been ruined by them. All while Nolan continues to reign, unquestioned and undisrupted. Until now, that is.

Mackenzie, Ava, Julie, Caitlin and Parker don’t seem to have much in common. Each has her own friends, dramas and goals. But one thing they do share: they all have a deep hatred of Nolan Hotchkiss. And they all think it’s about time he paid for the things he’s done. They come up with the perfect murder – a hypothetical murder, of course. It’s all wishful thinking … until they wake up one morning to find that their wish has come true. Nolan has been killed – in exactly the way they planned. The thing is, they didn’t do it. So who did?

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Author

For as long as she can remember, Sara Shepard has been writing. However, when she was young she also wanted to be a soap opera star, a designer for LEGO, a filmmaker, a claymation artist, a geneticist, and a fashion magazine editor when she grew up. She and her sister have been creating joint artistic and written projects for years, except they're pretty sure they're the only ones who find them funny.

She got her MFA at Brooklyn College and now lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband and two children. Sara Shepard is the author of two New York Times bestselling series, Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game, as well as the series The Perfectionists.
Visit her at www.saracshepard.com and follow her on Twitter and Snapchat at @sarabooks and on Instagram at saracshepard.

Extract

'I don't understand what actually happened,' Caitlin finally whispered, glancing nervously back and forth. 'I mean, everyone's saying it was Oxy. If so, someone else must have given him more drugs after we left, don't you think?'
'A lot of people hated him,' Mac whispered, glancing uncertainly at the packed parking lot.
Then Parker had a horrible thought. 'Do you think someone's trying to pin it on us?'
'I wondered the same thing,' Ava said.
Mackenzie fiddled with her glasses. 'No one was near us when we were talking in class.'
'The room isn't that big,' Caitlin said shakily. 'Who's in film studies with us?'
'Nolan,' Julie said. 'Or he was.'
'Alex,' Ava said. 'He'd never do something like that, even if he was eavesdropping.'
'Oliver Hodges,' Caitlin named. 'Ben Riddle. Quentin Aaron. They're off Nolan's radar. Ursula Winters on my soccer team. Fiona Ridge, who's vegan.'
Parker rolled her eyes. 'Just because she's vegan doesn't mean she wouldn't murder someone.'
Caitlin nodded, too. 'Fiona wouldn't hurt a fly.'
'My friend Claire's in the class, but I'm sure she didn't hear us,' Mackenzie offered. 'She was across the room.'
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Finches and waxwings chased one another across the courtyard, fighting over seeds. Beyond the yard's stone walls, they heard the slick hum of traffic on wet roads.
'This is so messed up.' Ava paced back and forth, her high, spiky heels wobbling precariously on the wet stones. 'What are we going to do?'
'We keep our heads down,' Julie said in a steady voice.
'We know we didn't kill anyone. This is all some kind of . . . coincidence, maybe. Or else someone is trying to get us in trouble. Either way, we should just pretend none of it happened.'
'So we . . . lie?' Mackenzie asked, biting the corner of her lip.
'We lie,' Julie said firmly.
Parker took a quick, shuddering breath. All at once, she felt eyes on the back of her neck, boring into her. She glanced back toward the entrance to the courtyard, but no one was there.